So, it happened. As I suggested the other day, Europe took a shift to the right in its voting during the European elections. Even before we discuss the absence of support for the Social Democratic bloc, there are a few headline grabbing results worth talking about; an anti-Islam party came in second in the Netherlands, an anti-Gypsy party won three seats in Hungary, and the British National Party won two in Great Britain. One of these seats went to a former member of the British National Socialist party (yes, that’s the Nazi party). Since then, there has been outrage in Britain, and eggs thrown at the other BNP seat holder, its leader, Nick Clegg.

However, it’s not quite as simple as a continent wide change in voter behavior. In Britain, the BNP did not increase the actual number of votes that they collected; rather, overall voter turnout was down. If something like a thousand more people had turned out to cast their votes, then this BNP unpleasantness could have been avoided in its entirety. In a side note, this is a pretty good example for anyone who tells you that they have no plan on voting in an election – any election – because their vote doesn’t matter. More extreme elements of society will always be motivated to turn out, but they only win through the complacency of the rest of the electorate.

This does, however, bring us to a larger point; how much of the right’s  (and I meant the mainstream right wing parties here) success in the election is due to an increase in their popularity, and how much is it down to supporters of the left wing parties registering their discontent by simply not coming to the polls? Turnout in these elections is never high; in 2005, it was 45%; this time around, it was down to 43%. Another factor to consider; during a recession, somewhat counter intuitively, the electorate tends to turn towards the party in power (see, for example, the Conservative Party in the UK in the eighties and nineties). This benefitted the center right parties in Germany and France; however, in Spain, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero seems not to have shown a whole amount of interest in the elections, and, as I wrote earlier, the Labour Party in Great Britain is pretty much on its last legs at the moment. Their share was down to thirteen percent, a drop of nearly seven percentage points from last time around.

So, the Lisbon treaty is likely to be ratified this year, giving the European Parliament unprecedented new powers to set policy. This is going to be significant to the US in a number of ways; will a more right will leadership be more belligerent towards Iran? What will be their attitude to Israel and Palestine? How will they behave in trade negotiations with the US? Will the increased popularity of the Green party lead to more pressure to introduce a cap and trade carbon policy?

There are no quick answers to these questions, but it’s certainly something to watch out for in the coming year.